Social media has been a great leveler, providing the layperson real-time access to scientific breakthroughs, weather reports, and even conversations with researchers. But of late the internet’s public square has also turned into a ring fight between academicians and scientists who hold slightly different POVs with respect to their domain. Interstellar interloper 3I/ATLAS has been a bone of contention; even as the general consensus is that it’s an anomalous comet, scientists like Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, who with his extensive studies speculates that it’s no mere icy rock from the edge of the milky way. Flagging 10 anomalies on 3I/ATLAS which includes its peculiar ecliptic path, non-gravitational acceleration, and color changes, among others.
Several scientists have expressed their skepticism over Loeb’s “10 anomalies in 3I/ATLAS,” including astrophysicist Jason Wright, the director of the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center. Co-author of the paper, “The Case for Technosignatures: Why They May Be Abundant, Long-lived, Highly Detectable, and Unambiguous,” published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Wright in his recent blog refuted all of Loeb’s arguments. He quips
Avi Loeb continues to claim that 3I/ATLAS has many anomalous behaviors that lead to the conclusion that it “might” be an alien spacecraft. He carefully hedges the probability that it is a spacecraft around 40%, which gives him plausible deniability of the bad-faith “just asking questions” variety while still making the comet sound weird enough that lots of people are thinking (or worried!) that it’s an alien spacecraft. It certainly gets him lots of TV time and fan mail.
He further jibed
You need to understand about Loeb is that he has no training in planetary science (the study of comets and other things in the Solar System) and does not seem to consult planetary scientists before (or after) making his claims. Yes, he is an accomplished astrophysicist, but his area of expertise and success is very far from the study of comets, with almost zero overlap.
Yes, he has published many papers on comets, but none of his co-authors have any expertise in these matters either, and most of those papers are not peer-reviewed, so they have not been checked for accuracy.
See Also: 3I/ATLAS: Astronomer Jason Wright Demystifies Prof. Avi Loeb’s 10 Anomalies One By One
Wright is not the only skeptic who detests the popularity drawn by Loeb. Co-author of the Silurian hypothesis, Professor Adam Frank, an astrophysicist whose research domain expands to astrobiology, took potshots at Prof. Loeb. In one of his tweets, Frank dropped an AI-generated image of an astronaut with a glass of whisky shaking his head, while the telly in the background reads “Harvard Astronomer Says Aliens Invading Soon.”
Every other astronomer in the world. pic.twitter.com/1Kpv6XXcGZ
— Adam Frank (@AdamFrank4) November 11, 2025
It’s the glass of whiskey that matters. Bulliet Rye, thank you very much bartender. https://t.co/icxpt5Fu2K
— Adam Frank (@AdamFrank4) November 11, 2025
Yes! Why is it so hard for people to get this when they want to go on about Loeb’s “anomalies”?
As Wright shows in his post, most of Loeb’s anomalies are demonstrably wrong and the rest are in the “zone of awesome” astronomers expect for comets. https://t.co/4A5FgXGfzu
— Adam Frank (@AdamFrank4) November 11, 2025
With such vast differences of opinions not addressed as debate rather as tweet trolls, whom would you choose to assert your trust in for the sake of science and rational query?
See Also: Avi Loeb Speculates 3I/ATLAS Could Be A Probe By Aliens Monitoring Us: ‘Maybe They’re Unhappy’